


Puzzle

by Sycophantism



Series: Media Controls by UnknownSpy [1]
Category: Media Controls (UnknownSpy)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 16:30:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18123704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sycophantism/pseuds/Sycophantism
Summary: Print Screen catches wind of something amiss going on within Cursor’s team. She investigates, and uncovers a terrible truth.





	Puzzle

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who has a new obsession? It's me. Go check out [Unknown Spy](https://www.deviantart.com/unknownspy/) immediately and get hype with me.

As uncharacteristic as it might be for her to get waylaid from a task, Print Screen had all but wrapped up her last investigation. Her file was ready to present before Power, assuaging any concerns that they might have had. It was done, and she should have been on her way back…

… but _something_ had caught her attention. A choice of word, or the tone it had been spoken in, she wasn’t quite sure. It had been enough to make her pause outside a café, gaze fixed ahead as she listened.

◤━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◥

“I’m not saying I would want it to happen _again_ ,” Loop scoffed, waving off the mere implication. Shuffle muffled a snicker into her collar; she knew well enough that Loop wouldn’t object to getting to see it again, either. “But it was… hmmm, satisfying?” 

“You’re not wrong there.” Shuffle kicked her legs over the side of her chair, popping forward to reach for her drink. “He got what was coming to him.” That’s what happened when you pushed, apparently. 

“Too bad _I_ didn’t get at his memories.” Sighing and propping her cheek on a fist, Loop let herself pout as she glared into the distance. “Wouldn’t mind seeing it from a first-hand perspective…”

Bursting into laughter, Shuffle nearly knocked her drink over. “You _would!_ ” Grinning and leaning forward, Shuffle propped her chin on the table. “I could show you, if you like~”

Loop shoved her shoulder, sent her reeling into cackles of delight. “You probably would,” she said, shooting Shuffle’s own words right back at her. “You’re no better than I am.”

“I’m _way_ better than you,” Shuffle disagreed, resolute as she grinned over the rim of her drink.

◣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◢

Print Screen stole a look into the café on her way past, filed away the names and images of the controls talking. 

_Memories._ They were talking about someone dying. That kind of frivolous tone was unsettling enough, never mind what they were saying. ‘Satisfying’? ‘Got what was coming to him’? 

Something bristled uncomfortably in the back of Print Screen’s mind as she hurried along, frowning at the ground. This called for further investigation. 

▐░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░▌

Finding Loop and Shuffle alone in a public space was proving too difficult. Print screen expanded her horizons, taking their peers into nearer consideration; Edit, Reset, Repeat, Stop. Not Cursor. She didn’t want risk any conflict of interest when she brought whatever this was to Power. 

◤━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◥

“I hate not _being able to remember_ ,” Reset growled, kicking at Stop’s chair for good measure. It worked to channel his agitated energy and get Stop’s attention. There was too much frustration pent up, and words didn’t always do the trick. So, lashing out. Not like anyone cared about the damn chairs. He needed to vent and that was all that mattered. 

“Don’t do that,” Stop said, exasperated already as he scrolled over his screen. A couple data were glancing over just from Reset’s harsh tone, let alone having him assault the bar’s furniture. “Just finish your drink.” It was time to go, if Reset was getting this riled up. Maybe getting him a drink called Reflective had been a bad idea; Stop had thought it would make him reconsider being an attention-mongering brat, but instead it seemed to have gotten him hung up on his death. 

Ignoring Stop, he went on, “Anything could have happened! No one was there! What if some pleb took my memories?!” The thought was strangely violating, made him shudder and rub his arms to dispel a chill. (It was Reset’s own fault, Stop reflected, that he’d been alone. That’s what happened when you ran off on your own--) “ _You_ should understand,” Reset grumbled, rocking back sharply in his chair, nearly knocking into a data behind himself, all-around taking up more space than necessary. 

Stop paused, finger hovering over his screen. “What?”

Reset tipped his chair forward, hands coming to slap against the table as his lips twisted into a scowl, clearly ready to let loose-- and stopped dead, something like alarm flashing over his features. 

Frowning, staring over his screen to Reset’s agitated expression, Stop turned a finger toward his face. “I know what happened,” he said, indicating his three deaths. Glitch, Copy, glitch. Two he’d been retold, one he recalled himself. Their job was a dangerous one-- and Copy was just… Copy. “Why would I--”

“ _Never_ mind!” Turning away, Reset propped his head on a fist, hating that the topic had veered so violently away from _himself_ \-- and nearer to something more dangerous, something he wasn’t meant to talk about, most _especially_ not around Stop. That was a close one. Snatching at his drink, raising it to his mouth and then stopping, grimacing, he shoved it away. “Hey! Get me something toasty, I’m sick of feeling-- whatever this was, _defective?_ What a stupid idea. Hey, how about some of that Buzz--”

◣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◢

Print Screen stared down at her notes, jotting down the conversation as it went on behind her. Reset was a loudmouth, which made it easy, and she blended into the crowd, so getting near enough to hear Stop’s responses hadn’t been difficult either. It had taken an entire day of trailing the two, and a whole evening of filtering out Reset’s bombastic rants about himself, but she had finally gotten something for her trouble. Whether it was relevant to her investigation, she wouldn’t know until she could put her notes all together.

‘ _You_ should understand’. She found herself even more confused than when she’d started. So it was Stop’s death, if she was on the right track, that Shuffle and Loop had been talking about. But Stop had said it himself, he didn’t have any voids in his memory-- or at least, he’d had someone around to catch him up on the events after he respawned. 

Scratching at her brow with a stylus, she sighed in frustration. This was making less sense the more she learned. 

▐░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░▌

She doubted Rewind was involved, let her mind drift as Repeat hung out with his friend. It was her sixth time tagging along at a distance to observe them, which wasn’t surprising considering how often Repeat took off to get into mischief with his pal. She doubted anything of relevance would come up, but _not_ following felt negligent, considering she couldn’t stalk any of the other controls of interest at the moment. 

It had been weeks since she began this investigation, and there was very little to show for it. Some holes in a story that she didn’t even fully have. Yet for all that she could be doing, something about this had hooked itself into her mind. 

This damn obsessive nature of hers. 

◤━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◥

They weren’t ones to mope or sulk, but sometimes you needed to get the nerves out. Even folks as peppy as them needed a way to channel the negativity that could build up-- doubts or anxieties or existential dread. 

“I’m only one behind her,” Rewind said, tone that of confession as he leaned over his four hands, staring at himself. “I’m not too far off from buggin’ out either.” He and Play worked hard to protect Record, but sometimes Rewind couldn’t help but notice the scant difference between his number of eyes and hers. It was too dark to ponder on for long, but he’d died a lot. 

“You already _bug_ plenty of people,” Repeat said, patting Rewind’s back with a grin. Rewind snorted a laugh, shouldering his friend in retaliation. “We both do! But hey, it’s not too bad. You get better every time you come back, so it’s harder to kill ya!” 

Rewind shrugged, conceding the point. He’d gotten through more in his current life than he would’ve been able to in any of the previous ones. “How’s your team deal with it?” he asked, shifting the topic from himself, ready to start the climb out of the moody conversation. 

“Hmm! Well, Loop is _weird_ , she gets this look in her eyes when she thinks about her deaths. Reset doesn’t like talking about it, and no one likes when he talks about it, so it works out.” They shared a giggle over Reset’s unbearable personality before Repeat continued. “Stop’s always worried about _something_ , but not his eyes I don’t think? Though I would be if I were him, it’s not normal for controls to die like he does. And Shuffle…”

◣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◢

She’d tuned in at the topic of deaths, not quite holding her breath. Stop’s name made her lean from her perch on the roof above them, having been forced to find such a place when they’d sought to be alone. She nearly fell from her position in her haste to scramble backwards when Repeat-- slipped up. 

It wasn’t a slip up _exactly_ , but the way he’d said it-- Print Screen scribbled it out hastily, not wanting to forget the word choice. “‘Not normal for controls to die like he does,’” she murmured to herself, pulling her stylus back and staring at the sentence. It… sounded like he’d been casting a wide net, speaking in a plural. Not just Stop’s death to Copy-- she’d found out about that in her snooping, had been shocked before realizing it was discussed with little fanfare among Cursor’s team, and that whatever they were hiding must be more than a control killing another control-- but something else… unusual. 

Something that wasn’t just deaths by glitch, like she’d gathered to be the case-- like Stop believed to be the case. 

Staring at her notes, Print Screen raised her screen to her face. Had Stop been killed by some other means? But he’d recalled--

No. He’d only recovered one set of memories, his encounter with Copy. The other two-- he’d been retold those stories. 

By his team. 

Clutching her screen, she stood and hurried away. 

▐░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░▌

“Stop.” The control lifted his head from his screen, offering a bland expression when he saw who was calling for him.

“Print Screen.” He couldn’t recall ever speaking to her before. Her tone was confident, though, so he assumed she had some business with him. Not exactly how he wanted his day to go, but he didn’t want to deal with rebuffing her. “What can I do for you?” The words were cordial, but his tone said otherwise. 

She wasn’t keen on lying, but skirting the truth to get the facts was something she didn’t shy away from. “I was hoping you could help clear something up for me. For my archives.” Flicking an image aside on her screen, she said, “Your deaths, can you tell me what the causes were?”

He looked… put off, surprised by the invasive question, but-- this was Power’s assistant. Not exactly someone you said no to, even if you were working for Cursor. Besides, it wasn’t anything secret. “A glitch,” he said, raising a hand to count off on his fingers, “Copy, and a glitch.” The second one might garner some raised brows, but he was used to it. 

What he didn’t expect was for her to completely ignore mention of his death at the hands of another control. “And your memories,” she continued, jotting her notes, “Were they picked up by another control, or were the events surrounding your deaths simply recounted to you?”

It was a strange question, and it took him a moment to formulate a response. “I think… the first time, there were too many glitches, so no one could get them. The second--” He frowned at the memory. “I have my own memories of the event. And the last one, Cursor took them.” 

Print Screen’s stylus went still over her screen. After a moment she looked up at him, searching his face. “Cursor did?” Stop nodded, inclining his head in question. “... Nothing.” Returning her attention to the screen she went on, “And how is your team? How do you all get along with Cursor?”

She hadn’t wanted this to be about Cursor-- but it had come around to them. She couldn’t ignore it.

All of her questions were confusing, and Stop found himself answering out of sheer bewilderment. “We get along fine. They’re… a good leader.” A pause, just a moment, and not to search for a word; a hesitation. Subtle, but Print Screen was used to looking for details.

“How does Cursor treat you?” 

“STOP!” A third voice broke in between them, and soon Reset skid into place, literally, between them. “Youuu, uh, Shuffle is looking for you! Get her the hell out of my hair, I don’t have time to deal with her.” 

Stop stared at Reset, the jittery energy making him bounce on his heels as he waited impatiently for Stop’s reply. “... Sure.” Glancing at Print Screen, then nodding when she gave him the go-ahead to leave the conversation, he headed back the way Reset had come from.

Slumping, then whipping around to face Print Screen, Reset narrowed his eyes. Oh, if it had been _anyone_ else-- Loop or Shuffle or, system forbid, _Cursor_ , then she would be so many pixels right now. Good thing he had his head on straight, unlike Shuffle and Loop. 

“You’re asking questions you shouldn’t be,” he warned, glaring at Print Screen as he advanced on her. “If you know what’s good for you--”

She grabbed his wrist when he reached for her, and in the next moment his back was slamming against a wall. Print Screen stood over him, and for a moment he realized that he had no real power over her abilities. Immediately the revelation had him snapping, wrenching against her grip. “Let the hell go of me! Do you know who I am--”

“Reset.” He didn’t stop, refusing to be interrupted, and she went so far as to cover his mouth. He stiffened, shocked and outraged. “For once, be _quiet_ , and _listen_.” Wow! Rude!! How dare she?!

Wrenching his head away, he felt indignation swell in his chest as he snarled, “No way! Absolutely not! Who do you think you are?! Some puffed-up paparazzi? You don’t know anything, don’t know what you’re digging into, don’t know what you’re talking about! And _I’m_ not talking about shit, I’m not gonna end up like Stop, I’m not an idiot, s--”

Her gaze sharpened. “What does that mean?” she demanded, insistent. “ _What happened to Stop?_ ” 

Once again she watched as the manic energy froze in Reset, and his mind ground to a halt as he caught up to what he’d said. He really did talk too much. 

His eye darted behind her, widening with-- alarm-- no, it wasn’t the same as last time-- _fear?_ Print Screen turned, only half surprised to see Cursor leveling her with a wary glare. Another glance at Reset’s expression had the pieces finally falling into place. The cause for secrecy, Loop and Shuffle’s exchange, the meaning behind Repeat’s comment, Stop’s cluelessness where his team seemed to know so much more…

“You… killed him?” Print Screen stared at Cursor, and the control’s eyes hardened. Reset made a strangled sound like he wouldn’t mind strangling _her_ , but something kept him from acting at all. “You killed your own subordinate. You _killed_ another control--”

“You’ve been stalking my team.” Cursor wasn’t surprised. They were more irritated that they hadn’t noticed… or that their team hadn’t realized they were being observed. “What did you hear?”

Print Screen waved the question away, clearly disinterested in explaining herself to them. “Why?” Cursor narrowed their eyes, adamantly refusing to respond. “ _Why_ , Cursor, you _killed another control--_ ”

The memory still haunted them, not just their own but from Stop’s perspective staring _down at them, caught off guard, the crushing weight of the hand holding him aloft--_

“What do you intend to do?” they asked instead, ignoring everything else. That was all that mattered, in the end; no justification, no explanation, would sway her from her chosen course of action. So what exactly that was would be all that mattered to Cursor. Because that was what they would have to respond to.

She didn’t move for a long while, coming to terms with the fact that Cursor wasn’t going to budge from their stance. Then, straightening, she pulled up her screen and took a brisk screenshot. “I’m bringing this to Power,” she said plainly, filing the image away with the rest associated with her investigation; all of them of Cursor’s team in various places around the city, candid if not for the context provided through her notes. “You’ve done something unforgivable, Cursor.”

She… didn’t expect the hand that flew for her, enough so that her feet were leaving the ground before she registered the implications of Cursor’s actions. Reset leapt away, backing up along the wall. Print Screen stared down as Cursor approached, disbelief the predominant emotion buzzing through her head. “ _What_ are you doing?”

Cursor crossed the space between them slowly, stopping only when they could cast their gaze across her screen. After a moment, they shot Reset a look, and he startled at being noticed. Quickly jumping over, he stared at the file-- wow, creepy, she’d been _stalking_ them-- and reached out to rewrite the notes. “Don’t you dare--” Print Screen wrenched against the hand, fruitless as Reset wiped clear the content of her investigation. He couldn’t modify the images, not until he realized they were tied to her abilities, and he grinned as he used his own to scrub them from the screen. 

It wasn’t until Cursor turned back to her that she properly realized what exactly was happening. There was incredulity, preceding the horror. “You can’t seriously be considering…” She didn’t finish the thought, staring down at the control who was, for all intents and purposes, her predecessor. 

Cursor must have seen something in her expression, because their own softened. They didn’t want to do this again. The grief from the last time hadn’t abated near enough for them to do this frivolously, but they knew they couldn’t let Power find out. What Cursor was doing with their team would all come to an end without them to lead the others. And that couldn’t be allowed to happen; their work was too important

As certain as they had been the first time, Cursor snuffed the life of another control. That certainty did nothing at all to dilute the guilt as Print Screen died. 

They didn’t want to take her memories, but they had to know what she had known, how she had found out. They had to make sure it never happened again. They had to make sure they never had to do this again.

Reset crept backward, quieter than anyone had ever heard him. Cursor stood up straight, hand coming around to their back, near enough to the other control that Reset jumped. Was he going to end up like Stop after all? Had he fucked up badly enough?

Cursor turned, looking-- tired, above all, and Reset felt the tightness in his chest loosen just a bit. “Reset…”

“It’s not my fault,” Reset immediately insisted, gesticulating as he went on, “She was having a go at Stop, _I_ pulled her off of him, someone musta said something, Loop or Shuffle or-- shit, probably Repeat, you know what a motormouth he is! I--” Words withering as Cursor narrowed their eyes marginally, Reset swallowed the rest of his tirade. 

“Be more careful,” was all Cursor said, turning away. They didn’t want to kill anyone else. They’d never wanted to kill anyone again. 

“Right-o.” Reset offered a hasty salute and beat his retreat, taking off. 

▐░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░▌

Shuffle wasn’t looking for him. He’d been annoyed at being sent on a wild goose chase, and Shuffle had almost harangued him into going out for drinks before he managed to escape her clutches under the guise of having a previous engagement. He was curious what Print Screen was getting at with her questions. 

Shuffle hadn’t been looking for him. That was all he’d been peeved about when he returned. Fuck, what a trivial thing to care about.

Stop slumped back against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting. ‘ _You killed him._ ’ What a ridiculous accusation. Where did she get that kind of an idea? He’d been killed by Copy, and that was already an eye ago.

Except Cursor hadn’t denied it. The more they didn’t say, the louder the panic crashing in Stop’s mind. His last death-- Cursor had told him it was a glitch, the team had _backed them up_ , they… all knew. Every one of them had known. 

By the time it occurred to him the danger that Print Screen might be in, she was already in Cursor’s clutches-- and for all of the indignant rage, the betrayal and heat boiling in his gut, he… froze. Fear rooted him to the spot, trapped him until it was too late. 

Cursor had killed him once ( _why, why had they done it, **what had he done**_ ). They were killing another control just for knowing.

They would kill Stop again to keep the secret of the first time. 

Stop pushed himself away from the wall, left the scene behind before Cursor could notice his presence. Notice that he’d heard. 

▐░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░▌

Reset stared at Stop’s retreating back, the unsteady lilt to his steps, the way he held back nausea with a hand to his mouth. He’d overheard, that much was clear. However much, it had been enough. Which was… bad. 

This was going to be bad. 

And that was absolutely none of his fucking business right now. 


End file.
